


Erebus.

by signifying_nothing



Category: K-pop, 방탄소년단 | Bangtan Boys | BTS
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Gen, Major Depression
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-07
Updated: 2016-02-07
Packaged: 2018-05-18 22:22:53
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,585
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5945349
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/signifying_nothing/pseuds/signifying_nothing
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>there's a hemlock grove growing in yoongi's throat, and namjoon can't do anything about it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Erebus.

“I'm sorry.”

“Just go.”

Yoongi can't count on both hands how many times he's had this conversation. It settles like shattered glass in his veins, like ice in his throat and he won't look up from the floor. What's the point, all he's going to see is pity, and he's... He can't. He hates himself. He's glad he hates him, too.

“I'll come back,”

“No, you won't.”

The door opens and closes to the sound of a resigned sigh and the scrape of a suitcase on the cement outside the apartment door. The shaft of sunlight is closed out and Yoongi sits in the chair on the side of the room, staring at the floor, the leg of the coffee table, the top of the coffee table where his rejection letter sits, _we're sorry, but we're not looking for someone with your qualifications at this time._ Beside that is the tumbler with the shine of gin on the inside, though he'd swallowed it all down twenty minutes before. Everything smells like hemlock.

Yoongi forces himself up, sways and nearly falls into the wall. He's so dizzy. Lightheaded. He's had three gin-and-tonics and two straight _gins_ and he hasn't eaten anything in two days, because he ran out of money before the argument with his lover even started, _I can't take care of you forever_ _ **well I'm not asking you to**_

His bed is at the wall opposite the apartment door. He manages to walk to it, fall into it, bury his face in his pillow. His breath smells like gin and the pillow smells like moss and water. He wishes, not for the first time, that he had a tub. So he could drown himself in it.

 

By the time word gets to Namjoon, and Namjoon finds his spare keys to Yoongi's apartment, the place looks like it's unoccupied. There's nothing on the walls, nothing on the shelves. Everything stuffed into boxes lining the counter between the kitchen and the rest of the apartment, labeled meticulously in tight capital letters.

There's a check on the counter for twenty-five thousand dollars, a bonus for the book deal and Yoongi is on his bed, staring up at the ceiling. Two empty bottles of gin rest on the floor beside him. Namjoon doesn't sigh, just walks closer and pulls Yoongi to sit up, ignoring the mess on the bed, gin and bile and Yoongi's ruined hair, cut haphazardly with scissors while his fingers fisted the strands. No one is better at this than Yoongi. Namjoon gave up trying to figure out why he did it a long time ago. He gave up trying to figure out _why_ Yoongi got himself into situations like this one, why he let himself love so deeply and get hurt.

“Come on,” he said, pulling Yoongi up against his shoulder, ignoring the sound of Yoongi throwing up onto his shirt. He'd worn a ratty shirt and jeans for this reason. It smells like juniper, like a forest is coming up out of Yoongi's damaged throat. “Come on, Yoongi. S'okay. Lemme help you.”

 

It's a task to wrangle Yoongi out of his clothes. To hold him up in the shower, back-to-chest, to kneel and rub at his belly until he has nothing left in him to throw up. Yoongi is sick. Yoongi is sick and Namjoon has known it for a very long time but it always hits home when he finds him like this. Yoongi loves so much. So much, too much, and he's convinced he's unlovable and unworthy and _filth,_ though Namjoon has never thought that. Not even when Yoongi is at his lowest, vomiting in the shower, crying violently, trying to wrench himself away from Namjoon while at the same time clawing into his arms to make sure he doesn't let go. Yoongi is sick, and Namjoon wishes he could fix it but he can't.

All he can do is wash his hair, wash his skin. Brush his teeth, clean his gauges, cut his too-long fingernails and change the sheets on his bed. He flips the mattress so the smell won't bother them, and tosses the pillow in a trash bag. He'll get a new one.

Yoongi's destructive behavior has been called passively suicidal. He drinks too much. Doesn't eat enough, gets into fights and loves people who abuse him, leave him with black eyes and busted lips. Yoongi is a genius but his genius destroys him, leaves him vulnerable. The only difference between seven years ago and now is that Yoongi was better about lying about it, then. He walked like a soldier, like he was carrying guns. He walked like he could take on the world and win and for a long time, Namjoon believed it. God, he'd believed it and he was so stupid. Yoongi... Yoongi was strong, but fragile. One sharp hit in the right place and he came down like a tower of toothpicks.

“Namjoon,” Yoongi's voice is raspy and rough from stomach acid and crying. “Namjoonie. Did you eat?”

“Yeah,” Namjoon whispers, glad that Yoongi is conscious enough to speak to him, is aware enough to be worried about him while at the same time hating it—couldn't he worry about himself, once in a while? “Yeah, hyung. I ate. We'll eat when you wake up, okay?”

“Yeah,” Yoongi says, his eyes unfocused on Namjoon's chest as Namjoon's hand pushes back his hair and then pulls the blankets up a little higher. “Yeah, okay.”

 

“I'm fine, Namjoon,” Yoongi says, though he just sounds tired and he doesn't move from where he sits between Namjoon's long legs, reclining back against him. “It's been a week.”

“Are you kicking me out?”

“I didn't say that,” Yoongi protests and Namjoon laughs, kissing his hair.

“Good. I like being here.”

There's a tension in Yoongi's shoulders that says he doesn't believe Namjoon but he also isn't willing to throw him off and tell him to get out. It's progress, Namjoon will take it. Yoongi shouldn't be alone, he shouldn't be left to his own devices when he's in the middle of a downspin and he can deny it all he wants but Namjoon has seen him eying the knives, considering the windows like he could push his little fist through them and maybe get lucky slice his wrist on the way back through.

“Namjoon,” Yoongi says, and Namjoon bands forward to kiss the back of his head.

“Mm?”

“Do you think...”

There is a moment of silence, and Namjoon waits.

“...Do you think it'll ever be okay? Really?”

“I dunno,” Namjoon says, clasping his hands together a little more insistently at Yoongi's belly, humming. “Probably, right? I mean... It can't stay the way it is forever.”

“But it can try,” he whispers.

Namjoon doesn't have anything to say to that. It would all come out hollow, anyway.

 

The book is a best seller. Within weeks of it being released Yoongi is swamped with phone calls and emails and SNS messages. It takes three months before he breaks and throws a glass in a restaurant where he is trying to eat but reporters and journalists followed him inside because he refuses to speak to them but they won't leave him alone. The glass shatters at the feet of the cameramen and Yoongi flees, murmuring apologies to the owner, who escorts him out through the kitchen. She's known him forever. She's fed him when he doesn't have the will to eat, she's given him water when he asked for gasoline and it's her who calls Namjoon because Yoongi won't step outside the back door. He's crouched in the office and she's afraid to let him leave.

He's afraid to leave.

The media knows who Namjoon is because Namjoon is the one whose name is in the dedication. _For Namjoon, may all your darlings burn, and your phoenix rise from their ashes._ They know who Namjoon is because Namjoon is the name in the dedication of the first novel, the one that made Yoongi famous, the one that made girls think he was a tortured artist and all he needed was the right person to love him and he would be all right.

Their questions are invasive and Namjoon shrugs them off because he's there for a reason. He gets under the desk where Yoongi is hiding and sits beside him, holds his trembling hand and murmurs that they need to go, because Yoongi has to go home, and Namjoon does, too.

Namjoon tucks Yoongi into the front seat of his car and closes the door before a voice makes him stop.

“How does it feel to be the handler of a loose cannon?”

“I wouldn't know.”

 

The next check is deposited and Yoongi offers half of it to Namjoon. “I don't need it,” he says, offering out an envelope. “You know I don't. I'll just blow it all anyway.”

“You should take better care of yourself,” Namjoon says.

“I wish I wanted to,” Yoongi replies, and Namjoon feels an icy grip on his gut start to tighten. Yoongi has never said he didn't want to get better. He's never said he doesn't care enough to get better. But there he is, sitting at his kitchen counter with his head in one hand and an envelope of money in the other, a hemlock grove growing out from under his tongue and his eyes smudged like waning moons.

“I wish you did, too,” Namjoon says, and Yoongi laughs. He laughs until he cries.

 

 


End file.
